Passengers at the airport in Zhengzhou, capital of the Chinese province of Henan, angry over lengthy delays due to snowy weather, smashed computers at airline check-in counters and destroyed information kiosks.

[1] Some of the angry passengers had been waiting for as long as five days to catch flights back to their jobs in other cities after their annual trips to see family during the Chinese New Year holiday period.

With the industrialization and urbanization of China following its late 20th-century economic reforms, many younger workers left their homes in rural areas to work in growing cities.

[3] This problem has been compounded on occasion when the People's Liberation Army Air Force has ordered traffic reductions at major airports to free up airspace for training missions.

[a] In summer 2013, 30 Nanchang Changbei International Airport passengers angry about a seven-hour weather delay pushed past security and occupied the runway.

Airports all over the country were plagued by delays, and even rail was affected, with trains limited to slower speeds due to the weather.

With the available seats in departure lounges long since filled, many sat and slept on their luggage, eating instant noodles they had prepared themselves as meals.

According to People's Daily, the captain of the local police station warned the airlines that if they continued to provide no information to travellers via the display boards, there would be violence.

[citation needed] Later that evening, 160 armed police officers arrived and restored order, per the emergency plan staff were finally able to implement.

"[8] People's Daily, the newspaper of the Communist Party, similarly criticized the airlines for not keeping up with the country's air transport infrastructure.

"[11][g] Over a year after the riot, Jamie Kenny, foreign correspondent for Abu Dhabi's The National, wrote that it followed the patterns of many other such "mass incidents", as Chinese authorities refer to occasions when citizens, angry about violations of their rights or official inattention to their concerns, gather together in large groups to protest, often destructive.

"In China, people who go through the established means of grievance resolution may find themselves beaten up by hired thugs, kidnapped by 'interceptors' sent by local authorities on their way to petition in Beijing or incarcerated in illicit 'black jails'" he wrote.

"[5] In a 2016 story that described the quality of Chinese domestic air travel as still low, with many of the country's major airports still reporting minimal improvements, if any, in on-time departure rates, the BBC's Capital noted that the airline industry was beginning to make some progress in working with the military to open up more airspace to commercial flights.